Cooley LLP

Cooley LLP

Headquarters	Palo Alto, California
No. of offices	13
No. of attorneys	897 (2017)
Major practice areas	Corporate, Litigation, Intellectual Property, Regulatory
Key people	Stephen C. Neal, Chairman Joseph W. Conroy, CEO[1]
Revenue	$1.072 billion (2017)[2]
Date founded	1920 in San Francisco; 98 years ago
Company type	Limited liability partnership
Website	www.cooley.com

Cooley LLP is an American international law firm, headquartered in Palo Alto, California. The firm has offices in Palo Alto, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., San Diego, Seattle, Colorado, Virginia, London, Beijing, and Shanghai. The firm's practice areas include corporate, litigation, intellectual property, fund formation, public markets, employment, life sciences, clean technology, real estate, financial services, retail, regulatory and energy.^[3][4]

Cooley is particularly known for its market-leading technology and life sciences practices as well as its vast experience with marquee initial public offerings (IPOs) and deep-rooted venture capital connections & financings.^[5]

The firm has consistently been ranked as an elite law firm for technology and life sciences companies, startups and emerging growth companies, and venture capital firms, including by Above the Law,^[6] Vault,^[7][8] and U.S. News & World Report.^[9] Cooley represents as clients over a third of the companies on the Wall Street Journal's Billion Dollar Startup Club.^[10]

According to Law360, Cooley is "widely regarded as one of Silicon Valley's go-to law firms."^[11] It is ranked as one of the 50 largest law firms in the world and is one of the most prestigious and selective law firms according to American Lawyer magazine.^[12]

History

Cooley was founded by Arthur Cooley and Louis Crowley in 1920 in San Francisco. In 1958, Cooley formed Draper, Gaither and Anderson, the first venture capital partnership to be organized on the West Coast. Also in the 1950s, Cooley formed Raychem and National Semiconductor, one of the original chip companies that gave "Silicon Valley" its name.^[13] In 1971 the firm (then Cooley, Crowley, Gaither, Godward, Castro & Huddleson) began representing Disney in the controversial copyright and trademark infringement case Walt Disney Productions v. Air Pirates.^[14][15] In the early 1980s, the firm took both Genentech and Amgen public. In the late 1980s, the firm moved into the tech area Palo Alto, from its then base in San Francisco.^[16] In 1989, the firm (then Cooley, Godward, Castro, Huddleson & Tatum) facilitated the IPO of Qualcomm.^[17] On October 31, 2006, Cooley LLP (then Cooley Godward) merged with Kronish Lieb Weiner & Hellman, which resulted in the firm growing from 440 lawyers to 550. In the announcement of the merger, The New York Times referred to Cooley as a "Leading Silicon Valley law firm".^[18] In 1995, two former partners of the firm, Robert Gunderson and Scott Dettmer, formed the law firm of Gunderson Dettmer. Like many other law firms, however, the firm laid off 114 people in 2009 from its offices, citing "the uncertain economy".^{[19][20][21][22]}

Offices

Cooley's San Francisco office is located on 101 California Street.

Cooley has offices in 10 United States cities, one in London, one in Shanghai, and another in Beijing.^[23][24] It also had an office in Kirkland, Washington, which it closed in the early 2000s.^[25]

Cooley launched in London on January 12, 2015, creating a 55-lawyer practice and the firm's first office in Europe. Its lawyers were laterally hired from the London offices of Morrison & Foerster and Edwards Wildman Palmer, raiding the latter's entire office. The office is run by Justin Stock who headed the corporate department of Morrison & Foerster's London office before joining Cooley^[26]. The firm launched its Beijing office in 2018, in an effort to cater to clients in the burgeoning Chinese venture capital market. ^[27]

Recognition

The American Lawyer has ranked Cooley number forty-seven in its annual ranking of U.S. law firms by gross revenue.^[28] Top Legal 500 and the National Law Journal's NLJ 250 has ranked Cooley's practice areas from second through eighth tier in its national survey of law firms.^[29] In addition, U.S. News and World Report nominated Cooley as the 2011–12 law firm of the year in biotechnology law.^[30] In 2011, Cooley LLP was named U.S. Tax Court Firm of the Year by the International Tax Review.^[31] Cooley was recognized as one of Law360's Capital Markets Practice Groups of the year for 2015.^[32] In 2016, Chambers UK recognized Cooley as being a leading practice in six practice areas along with singling out sixteen lawyers for their performance.^[33] In 2018, Cooley was named by U.S. News and World Report as the #1 law firm in the country in both the venture capital law and technology law categories, and the firm was named by The American Lawyer's Recorder publication as the top Venture Capital practice of the year. ^[34][35]

Cooley has been recognized as one of only five law firms (and the highest ranking of any law firm) to be listed on Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For.^[36] The firm's first-year associates are paid a salary of US$190,000, matching Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy's 2018 compensation increase.^[37]

Notable Clients

Some of Cooley's clients include:

• Apple^[38]
• Cisco^[39]
• eBay^[40]
• Facebook^[40]
• Google/Alphabet Inc.^[40]
• Golden State Warriors^[41]
• Gilead^[42]
• LinkedIn^[40]
• Nike^[40]
• Microsoft^[40]
• Nintendo^[40]
• NVIDIA^[43]
• Qualcomm^[42]
• Salesforce^[42]
• Sony^[40]
• SpaceX^[42]
• Snap, Inc.^[44]
• Tesla^[45]
• Twitter^[46]
• Uber^[42]

References